We moved a lot as a kid, but there were two things we always had in every house:
an ice pick
and a junk drawer.
I have no idea what an ice pick is for because, growing up in the 70s, our ice didn’t need picking. But there it was…in the junk drawer. The junk drawer contained the most marvelous collection of…well, junk. I would give anything for a time machine just to transport that junk drawer back to me for nostalgic purposes. I’d recognize everything in it, even if now I can’t conjure up the details. And it was always in the kitchen. It had miscellaneous parts, wires, tools, pens that didn’t work…all kinds of shit.
These are the types of things from my childhood I think about now and again, but generally tend to forget for years at a time.
And, of course, I now have a junk drawer. It’s in my kitchen and is full of all kinds of shit.
Yup, we had an ice pick. Useful for defrosting the freezer, and also when making homemade ice cream the way Karana intended…in a hand cranked ice cream maker with a wooden tub.
Not only did we have a junk drawer and an ice pick when i was a kid, so do I - it’s even the same ice pick. I find it useful when I need to, well, pick at things.
Yeah, we had an ice pick. As an adult, I don’t have one, though I do have some awls if I need to poke holes in things. And, by the way, if you use an ice pick to remove the frost from an old fashioned freezer, you run the risk of damaging the coils so it won’t freeze any more.
We don’t have an ice maker, because I’m the only one who seems capable of refilling the ice trays when they’re empty, so we buy our ice in bags. I have a wooden meat tenderizer that I keep in the freezer, specifically for smacking the bags of ice to break up the cubes.
We do have a junk drawer. That’s where we keep our nutcrackers and picks and corkscrews and such.
Yep…I still have one. I use it when I smoke ribs, to remove the skin on the back of the ribs. You slide the ice under it, peel it up, and then grab the skin with some of those catfish skinning pliers you get at walmart…and throw in the junk drawer.
I’ve never owned nor used an ice pick, but I’ve often cursed about my lack of one when the ice in my ice-maker clumps together and I want to make a drink with it.
It’s just one of those objects I NEVER think about buying until the moment I need it. And then I forget all about it…til the next time.
I don’t know of anybody who doesn’t have a junk drawer. Mine contains takeout menus, old cell phones, ten thousand pens, tape, and a bunch of weird tool-looking/vaguely important metal things in ziploc bags. Those belong to Mr. Levins and I have never asked what they’re for because I suspect that even if he does recall, the answer will bore me.
oh, and who can forget all the keys? What are all these keys to? Why do I still have them?
wow…the old ice pick…hmmm…I haven’t thought about that thing for 3 decades…
Thanks!
Imagine the scene:
the 1970’s, a new suburban house,shag carpet and avocado colored kitchen and all modern applicances, but with an odd, unfathomable, weird and mysterious item in the kitchen junk drawer. With a carved wooden handle that was worn smooth, but still had the manufacturer’s name embossed on it. It must have been 50 years old…and, like the faded sepia-toned family pictures of dead relatives from 2 generations ago, it was something that for some unknown reason deserved to be treated with respect, but was never talked about…
Nobody ever used it, nobody even knew what it was for…but somehow it was always there. And always had been, probably for the past several centuries. I could vaguely imagine using it to pick at something, but I sure as hell had no concept of why it was called an ice pick.
I was a kid, and the only ice I had ever seen was in the metal ice-cube trays that you took out of the freezer, and awkwardly tried to release from the tray by pulling hard on a metal lever that was so cold your skin stuck to the frosted handle…
People still have ice picks (and don’t use them to murder people?) Where on earth do you get them? I’m not sure I’d know one if I saw one, but I know I don’t see them at, like, Target. Otherwise I’d have said, “Holy crap, an ice pick!”
Thanks for bringing back old memories. I can instantly visualize that old ice pick with the weathered wood handle. More than that, I can remember ice tongs used for moving blocks of ice to the actual ice box. The ice box was replaced with a “modern” electric refrigerator, but the tongs were still used during vacations at a cottage near Oscoda Michigan.
The ice man would come by like the ice cream man today and at one time was pulled by a horse.
Yes to the junk drawer then, & still have one (so full it takes some fiddling to get the thing to shut)
Yes to the ice pick then, a couple different ones actually. Don’t still have the pointy murder weapon one, but I do have my parents’ old fancy bar version, which looks like a small brass hammer with a pick instead of a claw on the head of it.
We had the drawer, but I don’t remember an ice pick being in there, or anywhere else in the house. I don’t remember anyone ever buying a block of ice back then, and I’m not sure where I’d go if I wanted to buy one today, so there was no need.
We had an ice pick growing up in the extra drawer, where all the utensils went that weren’t often used, like the julienne peeler and the cheese slicer.
My grandparents used it to break up ice in the old metal trays. Sometimes you couldn’t get the handle to pull good until you loosened it up a bit with the pick.
I was scared to death of it when I was a kid but danged if I know why now.
hasn’t the OP ever bought a block of ice for a ice chest? You need a ice pick to break it into pieces.